Development / Refinement

I haven’t decided what design that I want to do as my final one, so I am going to develop each one out and do another survey / group critical analysis to find out which people find the best. I am working to see how I can improve my initial design because I have had various feedback on how it could be improved with my thought on how I can change it as well. From the experimenting I have came up with this look, lots of aspects have changed and I do need to see whether the new design is better or not.

When creating the designs I didn’t use guidelines or anything like to to create a neat layout and contain all the information. This could be something I do to improve it or for the next time I create a magazine. Other than this, I feel as though they have turned out relatively well.

The typography has changed in the pages, I have chosen for the title Krisen ITC as it provides a more freehand writing look and yet is still clear for parents and children to read. For the rest of the text it was variations of the main font Cooper Std (Regular, Italic and Black). I’ve also got rid of all the gradient text as it wasn’t very good and clear to read, but not only that it didn’t work well with the page. For the titles of the activity on the right hand side of the page I did still want it to stand out so I had a go with the outer glow which provided a bold sub-title.

The background I wanted to change to a gradient of the four colours, but not only that make them fade to white at the bottom. This complements the rest of the work better than the blue to white gradient which was there before.

For the left hand side of the page I thought to move the four descriptions of each emotion and put all four of the characters above as the team together kind of thing. So they’ll see that first then move onto the descriptions of each character and what emotion they represent. I finished it off was a low transparent outer glow to give it a more eye catching look.

Below: Template Re-designed

Below: First Idea (Follow The Lines) Re-Designed

Below: Second Idea (Word Search) Re-Designed

Below: Third Idea (Maze) Re-Designed

But before I got to this stage there were elements that were made then changed to make it look less complicated and match a children’s magazine better. I eneded up experimenting a lot with the title trying to not over complicate it.

For one of the title designs I had too much of a 3D element and therefore it wouldn’t fit the style of the magazine of it being simple. (Below)

I also had it where the title had too many effects being used and just ended up look too much for the children’s magazine Okido which keeps things as simple as possible.I used a bevel and drop shadow which I personally felt was too much. (Below)

For this title design, I though about having a border around the title to the fill the space, in addition to this has a inner shadow. Again this was too much, and I had to think about using less of a 3D element that used inner shadows in the end. (Below)

Even though I have a bit of a bevel for the shape underneath the title, I do not think it is too much, but I do have a joint title idea so if I change my mind and see what other people think, I could end up changing it. This one is very simple, just a colour overlay and stroke (outline) both with the opacity down. (Below)

Using this template I thought I would change the titles to match this look on all the my designs. This is my second developed idea. (Below)